NEED TO CATCH up? TheJournal brings you all of today’s top stories.

IRELAND

Evie McCarthy (2), Sonny Doran (1) and Inde Doran (3) pictured at the launch of the Oesophageal Cancer Fund (OCF), Lollipop Day for 2025. Andres Poveda Andres Poveda

• A man was charged in relation to the death of a woman at a residence in Waterford City yesterday.
• A new opinion found a rise in support for Sinn Féin since the general election last year. The party is now tied with Fianna Fáil as the most popular party among voters. 
• A small number of people were removed from a Holocaust commemoration event this afternoon after standing in protest during a speech by President Michael D. Higgins.
• The damage caused by Storm Éowyn to Ireland’s electricity grid is “extensive”, a Government minister said, with ESB saying that 100,000 will remain without power until the week after next.
• Diageo said it has “no intention” to sell the Guinness brand.
• This week’s row over speaking time in the Dáil continued to rumble on, with a Government minister and Opposition TDs clashing over what happened on Wednesday.
• Gardaí announced that a man in his late 20s was arrested after gardaí seized around €300,000 worth of cannabis during a search operation in southeast Dublin yesterday.
• Despite claims by Government that Ireland would not buy military equipment from Israe, the State is to purchase helicopters with extensive amounts of Israeli defence tech, The Journal revealed.
• Families across the country described the devastating damage to their homes after Storm Éowyn wreaked havoc throughout the country.
• Internal polling in RTÉ found that public trust in the organisation plummeted to historic lows in the wake of the Ryan Tubridy payments scandal, halving in an extremely short space of time.

WORLD

Palestinians gather with their belongings near a roadblock as they wait to return to their homes in northern Gaza Mohammad Abu Samra / AP Mohammad Abu Samra / AP / AP

#BELARUS: Autocrat Alexander Lukashenko said that his jailed opponents had “opened their mouths too widely” as he voted in an election set to extend his three-decade rule in the Moscow-allied state.

#LEBANON: Israeli soldiers killed 15 people in south Lebanon today, including a soldier, as residents tried to return home on the day Israel was meant to withdraw under a truce deal.

#SOUTH KOREA: South Korean prosecutors indicted impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol for being the “ringleader of an insurrection” after his abortive declaration of martial law, ordering the suspended leader to remain in detention.

#GAZA: US President Donald Trump floated a plan to “just clean out” Gaza, and said he wants Egypt and Jordan to take Palestinians from the territory, as a fragile truce between Israel and Hamas enters its second week.

PARTING SHOT 

What a week. An unprecedented start to the Dáil term. A temporary and perhaps uneasy truce over speaking rights that allowed the government to get off the ground. The Opposition putting forward a rare, united front. Again, this is week one; there are five years left to go.

Listen to this week’s episode of the Candidate to get a round up of the latest goings-on in Leinster House.